2. A full list of foreign nouns that are uncertain of their Englished plurals is required. The unreadiness to come to a decided opinion in doubtful cases is due to the absence of any overruling principle; and the lack of a general principle is due to ignorance of all the particulars which it would affect. Inconsistent practice is no doubt in many cases established irrevocably, and yet if all the words about which there is at present any uncomfortable feeling were collected and exhibited, it would then probably appear that the majority of instances indicated a general rule of propriety and convenience, and this would immediately decide all doubtful cases, and these, when once recognized and established in educated practice, would win over many other words that are refractory in the absence of rule. What exceptions remained would be tabulated as definitely recognized exceptions.
3. Besides the class of words indicated in Mr. Pearsall Smith’s paper, there is another set of plural forms needing attention, and that is the Greek words that denote the various sciences and arts; there is in these an uncertainty and inconsistency in the use of singular and plural forms. We say Music and Physics, but should we say Ethic or Ethics, Esthetic or Esthetics? Here again agreement on a general rule to govern doubtful cases would be a boon. The experience of writers and teachers who are in daily contact with such words should make their opinions of value, and we invite them to deal with the subject. The corresponding use of Latin plurals taking singular verbs, as Morals, should be brought under rule.
4. The question of the use of ae (æ) and oe (œ). Our Society from the first abjured the whole controversy about reforms of spelling, but questions of literary propriety and convenience must sometimes involve the spellings; and this is an instance of it. On the main question of phonetic spelling the Society would urge its members to distinguish the use of phonetic script in teaching, from its introduction into English literature. The first is absolutely desirable and inevitable: the second is not only undesirable but impracticable, though this would not preclude a good deal of reasonable reform in our literary spelling in a phonetic direction. Those who fear that if phonetics is taught in the schools it will then follow that our books will be commonly printed in phonetic symbols, should read Dr. Henry Bradley’s lecture to the British Academy ‘On the relations between spoken and written language’ (1913), and they will see that the Society’s Tract II, on ‘English Homophones’, illustrates the unpractical nature of any scheme either of pure phonetics in the printing of English books, or even of such a scheme as is offered by ‘the Simplified Spelling Society’; because the great number of homophones which are now distinguished by their different spellings would make such a phonetic writing as unutilitarian as our present system is: moreover, if it were adopted it would inevitably lead to the elimination of far more of these homophones than we can afford to lose; since it would enforce by its spelling the law which now operates only by speech, that homophones are self-destructive.
5. Mr. Pearsall Smith has returned to the question of dialectal regeneration mentioned in Tract I, in which we invited contributions on the subject. In response we had a paper sent to us, which we do not print because, though full of learning and interesting detail, it was a curious and general disquisition calculated to divert attention from the practical points. What the Society asks for is not a list of lost words that are interesting in themselves: we need rather definite instances of good dialect words which are not homophones and which would conveniently supply wants. That is, any word proposed for rehabilitation in our practical vocabulary should be not only a good word in itself, but should fall into some definite place and relieve and enrich our speech by its usefulness. It is evident that no one person can be expected to supply a full list of such words, but on the other hand there must be very many of our members who could contribute one or two; and such contributions are invited.
Exempli gratia. Here are two words with very different titles and claims, nesh and hyppish.
Nesh, which has two columns in the Oxford Dictionary, begins in A.D. 888, and is still heartily alive in Yorks. and North Derbyshire, where it is used in the sense of being oversensitive to pain and especially to cold. In this special signification, to which it has locally settled down after a thousand years of experience, it has no rival; and its restoration to our domestic vocabulary would probably have a wholesome moral and physical effect on our children.
Hyppish is the Englished form of hypochondriacal, its suffix carrying its usual diminutive value, so that its meaning is ‘somewhat hypochondriacal’. Berkeley, Gray, and Swift used hyps or the hyp for hypochondriasis, and the adjective was apparently common. It would seem that hypochondria was then spoken, as hypocrisy still is, with the correct and pleasant short vowels of the Greek prefix, not as now with a long alien diphthong haipo-. It was presumably this short y that accidentally killed hyppish; for the word hipped was used of a horse lamed in the hip, and alongside of this hipped, and maybe attracted by it, an adjective hypt arose. When once hyp and hypt were confounded with hip and hipped, hyppish would suffer and lose definition. But hypt and hipped combined forces, and were probably even from the first in their present uncertain condition, for when nowadays a man says that he is hipped, he has no definite notion of what he means except that he is in some way, either in his loins or mind incapacitated and out of sorts. Whether hypt and hipped have mortally wounded each other or are still fighting in the dark may be open to discussion: hyppish has now a fair field, and if people would know what the word means, it might be restored, like nesh, to useful domestic activity.
6. The example given of the word fast on p. 12 suggests another matter to which attention might be paid. If one looks up any word in the Oxford Dictionary, one will be almost distressed to see how various the significations are to which it is authoritatively susceptible. A word seems to behave like an animal that goes skirting about discontentedly, in search of a more congenial habitation. It is sometimes successful, and meets with surprising welcome in some strange corner where it establishes itself, forgetful of its old home: sometimes, like the bad spirit in the gospel, it will return to the house whence it came forth. It is, of course, natural and essential to a living language that such shades and varieties of meaning should evolve themselves, although they are incidentally a source of ambiguity and subtle traps for careless logic; but when these varieties so diverge as to arrive ultimately at absurdities and contradictions, then it is advisable to get rid of them. In such extreme cases the surgeon’s knife may sometimes save life; it is the only cure; and to use a word in a deforming or deformed sense should be condemned as a solecism. Contributions, stating examples of this with the proposed taboo, are invited.
7. This last fault, of damaging a word by wrong use, might come under the general head of ‘Abuse of words’. This is a wide and popular topic, as may be seen by the constant small rain of private protests in the correspondence columns of the newspapers. The committee of the S.P.E. would be glad to meet the public taste by expert treatment of offending words if members would supply their pet abominations. There was a good letter on the use of morale in the Times Literary Supplement on February 19. The writer, a member of our Society, permits us to reprint it here as a sample of sound treatment.